The new rulers of Syria are reportedly attempting to capture members of former dictator Bashar Assad’s “Shabiha” repressive force, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on Sunday.
The non-governmental organization cited sources within the country who said that the Military Operations Administration, described as in the past as the wing of the Syrian opposition responsible for troop organization and movement, has established “checkpoints” where fighters are receiving “lists with the names of suspects and the ‘Shabiha’ and affiliates of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime,” an attempt to prevent them from escaping the country after the fall of the Assad regime on December 7. SOHR, which has been sympathetic to the Syrian opposition in the past, claimed that the group is receiving “public welcome” for the measure to hunt down alleged regime sympathizers.
“According to SOHR sources, parts of some villages, which are known for accommodating notorious families, have experienced mass escape from those villages,” the group claimed, “along with monitoring damage to public properties and breaking of power pylons, while the forces of the Military Operations Administration managed to enter and dominate those villages.”
SOHR identified Latakia, a region considered the heartland of the Alawite Shiite minority group that Assad belonged to, as an especial target of security operations.
Assad, whose family ruled Syria for nearly half a century, waged a civil war against multiple factions of resistance since 2011 that largely went dormant after Assad, with the help of allies in Iran and Russia, crushed several militias. The civil war roared back to life in late November when Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an al-Qaeda offshoot and U.S.-designated terrorist organization, staged a successful surprise attack to capture Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city. As HTS expanded its targets of attack to several other major cities, it found minimal resistance from the corrupt and poorly equipped Assad military, until HTS leaders marched into Damascus on December 7. Assad and his family fled to Russia, leaving the country in the hands of HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.
This photograph shows picture of missing people hanging on the main gate of the prison of Saydnaya, north of Damascus on December 16, 2024. (SAMEER AL-DOUMY/AFP via Getty Images)
HTS is currently in charge of a “transition” process that Jolani has claimed will be “inclusive” of all of Syria’s communities, even as it began with the suspension of the Syrian constitution for at least three months. Some of the most persecuted groups in the country, however – prominently Syria’s Christian community, the Kurdish populations in the north, and the Alawites – are living in fear that the jihadists will use their newfound power to exterminate them in their quest to impose sharia, or the Islamic law. Jolani has confirmed his is interested in imposing an Islamist government on Syria.
Adding to the alarm surrounding HTS’s ascent to power is the widespread dissemination of unverified videos throughout social media, particularly the encrypted app Telegram, that appear to show public executions, revenge killings, and other atrocities by Syrian “rebels” throughout the country. Many are undated and the location in which they are filmed is unclear. The killers in some of the videos claim to be jihadists and on some occasions claim to be killing “Shabiha” members, though they provide no proof for those claims. The Middle Eastern outlet Al Jazeera reported on Friday of widespread videos showing alleged “crowds gathering to watch public hangings,” as did the Times of India, which published some of them (warning: graphic images behind the link).
France 24 appeared to verify at least one of these videos, published on Telegram on December 10, as being a post-Assad “summary execution,” apparently at the hands of HTS terrorists. In the video, two alleged “Shabiha” fighters are killed while the jihadists disparage them with anti-Alawite slurs and shout allahu akbar, the global rallying cry of jihadists.
The French outlet noted that a deluge of such videos, many of them difficult to verify, have surfaced on Telegram.
“Two videos filmed in Idlib and posted on December 10 show a body being dragged behind a car as a crowd applauds,” France24 narrates. Others appear to show crowds amassing to watch public executions.
The French newspaper Le Monde independently investigated the authenticity of the video of the execution of the alleged “Shabiha” in its own report on Friday, suggesting that it was in fact taken after the fall of Assad in the location of Rabia, Hama. It noted that Latakia is also home to a town named Rabia but that the landscape in the video did not appear to match that part of the country.
The disconnect between the HTS leadership’s promises of an “inclusive” new government and video footage of barbaric executions is partly explained, France 24 noted, by the fact that HTS has “provided shelter to international jihadists from Afghanistan, Chechnya, and France.” In addition to its own brutal terrorists, it has scores of fighters whose behavior the overarching organization may only tenuously control. The SOHR, in an article on Monday, reported that the HTS’s “Administration of Military Operations” is contending with alleged imposters.
“People disguised as members of the Administration of Military Operations in three cars equipped with heavy machineguns entered villages of southern Al-Qirdaha countryside,” the organization detailed, “to rob the house of ‘Haitham Ammar,’ a former brigadier general of the former regime and other houses in the area, and roamed in the villages to collect weapons from civilians.”
In Latakia, once an Assad stronghold, some locals report being expelled from their homes by jihadis, while others reportedly refuse to open their doors to anyone. Many report their personal belongings looted and their homes stolen by apparent HTS terrorists. The BBC, reporting from the province, documented HTS leaders attempting to document alleged crimes against minorities and claiming to protect them – but taking no meaningful action to stop the attacks. HTS terrorists blamed the violence and any incidents embarrassing to the group on “infiltrators of the revolution” and “saboteurs.”
The widespread robberies reported appear to be a separate phenomenon from the executions, however, and many locals fear that HTS will more systematically exterminate those who do not conform to its radical Islamist goals as it cements its control over the country.
“The HTS members came to our village and guaranteed the safety of the Alawites, But my family is terrified and cannot trust them. They fled to the mountains to wait and see what happens next,” an Alawite civilian identified as “Ali” told France 24. “While HTS fighters have instructed locals to surrender their weapons, few are willing to comply. This reluctance is compounded by videos circulating on social media that appear to show arbitrary executions carried out by HTS members.”
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